Month: July 2017

On the topic of “Net Neutrality”, this is one case where I believe that a true neutral Internet is something that the US should mandate. I won’t write a lot here – use your favorite search engine for “net neutrality” and look at some of the sites that are backing it (Google, Wikipedia, NetFlix, Amazon, etc).

Without it, our Internet service providers can slow or block access to sites on the Internet that either don’t pay them directly, or have a competing product. You might have noticed this in your cell phone advertisements – notice how many offer “free music streaming” if you use their service? Cell companies aren’t held under the current net neutrality rules and can do that; they can pick-and-choose the music that doesn’t use up your data allowance for the month and by extension are choosing what music services “win”. Now image that Google pays your ISP to make searching their site the only search engine that your home computer can access.
Or worse yet, the local WalMart pays the local ISPs to block access to Amazon.com? They probably couldn’t pay your ISP block it, but I’m sure for the right sized check they could get the ISP to make Amazon.com take minutes to come up, but WalMart.com would be instant. Who would you buy from then?

I don’t like the degree of government oversight especially in rapidly evolving technical topics, but this is one that a basic law that says “treat all data as equal” has won me over.

If you’re interested in taking action, head over to “Battle for the Net” at https://www.battleforthenet.com/ and sign up to call your congress men and congress women to ask them to stand with us.